Month: September 2008

I Said No, No, No

by digby

I don’t know about you, but McCain’s dizzying Britney-like behavior last week screams “I don’t want to go to rehab.” The next thing you know he’ll be speaking in a British accent and shaving his head…

And according to today’s NY Times, he actually does have at the very least a potential gambling problem. In more ways than one:

Perhaps no episode burnished Mr. McCain’s image as a reformer more than his stewardship three years ago of the Congressional investigation into Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican Indian gambling lobbyist who became a national symbol of the pay-to-play culture in Washington. The senator’s leadership during the scandal set the stage for the most sweeping overhaul of lobbying laws since Watergate. “I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes,” the senator said in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination this month. But interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation. The senator’s longtime chief political strategist, for example, was paid $100,000 over four months as a consultant to one tribe caught up in the inquiry, records show. Mr. McCain’s campaign said the senator acted solely to protect American Indians, even though the inquiry posed “grave risk to his political interests.” As public opposition to tribal casinos has grown in recent years, Mr. McCain has distanced himself from Indian gambling, Congressional and American Indian officials said. But he has rarely wavered in his loyalty to Las Vegas, where he counts casino executives among his close friends and most prolific fund-raisers. “Beyond just his support for gaming, Nevada supports John McCain because he’s one of us, a Westerner at heart,” said Sig Rogich, a Nevada Republican kingmaker who raised nearly $2 million for Mr. McCain at an event at his home in June. Only six members of Congress have received more money from the gambling industry than Mr. McCain, and five hail from the casino hubs of Nevada and New Jersey, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics dating back to 1989. In the presidential race, Senator Barack Obama has also received money from the industry; Mr. McCain has raised almost twice as much.

So, reformer McCain’s Abramoff investigations actually ended up benefiting his contributors and lobbyists who are now working on his campaigns? How convenient. Are there any of his vaunted reform credentials that aren’t complete bullshit?
And on a personal level, the maverick seems to really, really like to gamble under stress, which his behavior in picking Palin and the antics last week suggest is exactly what’s happening:

In May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables. For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. “We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.” The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.” “You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.

McCain needs to worry a bit more. His corrupt ties to lobbyists in the face of his constant hectoring about integrity is very revealing. The man clearly protests too much. More importantly, we should all worry that this erratic, intemperate flyboy is a big time gambler who plays with big time stakes. He certainly rolled the dice on Palin and that could have huge consequences both for his ability to win the election — and for the country should he manage to eke out a victory.

These days McCain looks much less like a maverick and more like someone who’s got problems and can’t ask for help.

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Shameless

by digby

They supposedly have a deal. Again. But this fearmongering rhetoric about how people won’t be able to access their money in the ATMs or that their paychecks won’t be any good is absolutely outrageous. They are actually trying to induce panic among average Americans.

And it’s highly suspicious. Why, if I didn’t know better I’d think they were making a political argument rather than an economic one. They wouldn’t do that would they?

We have nothing to fear but these lying bastards themselves.

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Trouble In Sarahdice

by digby

Uh oh. Sarah’s gonna get yelled at:

Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin’s stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama’s support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists “She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we’re not going to do anything except in America’s national security interest,” McCain told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of Palin. “In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that’s—that’s a person’s position… This is a free country, but I don’t think most Americans think that that’s a definitve policy statement made by Governor Palin.” Saturday night, while on a stop for cheesesteaks in South Philadelphia, Palin was questioned by a Temple graduate student about whether the U.S. should cross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan. “If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

I saw the interview and Maverick looked mighty peeved. Daddy doesn’t like being embarrassed on TV. Somebody’s going to be in restriction for a good long while for that one.

h/t to bb

Serious People

by digby

We all know the Village loves to continuously reward those who have been wrong by turning to them for solutions to problems they had a hand in creating, but we can’t forget that they also ignore those who were right.

In the case of the financial crisis, nobody was more right that Nouriel Roubini, who was recently featured in this profile in the New York Times:

August 17, 2008

Dr. Doom

By STEPHEN MIHM

On Sept. 7, 2006, Nouriel Roubini, an economics professor at New York University, stood before an audience of economists at the International Monetary Fund and announced that a crisis was brewing. In the coming months and years, he warned, the United States was likely to face a once-in-a-lifetime housing bust, an oil shock, sharply declining consumer confidence and, ultimately, a deep recession. He laid out a bleak sequence of events: homeowners defaulting on mortgages, trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities unraveling worldwide and the global financial system shuddering to a halt. These developments, he went on, could cripple or destroy hedge funds, investment banks and other major financial institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The audience seemed skeptical, even dismissive. As Roubini stepped down from the lectern after his talk, the moderator of the event quipped, “I think perhaps we will need a stiff drink after that.” People laughed — and not without reason. At the time, unemployment and inflation remained low, and the economy, while weak, was still growing, despite rising oil prices and a softening housing market. And then there was the espouser of doom himself: Roubini was known to be a perpetual pessimist, what economists call a “permabear.” When the economist Anirvan Banerji delivered his response to Roubini’s talk, he noted that Roubini’s predictions did not make use of mathematical models and dismissed his hunches as those of a career naysayer. But Roubini was soon vindicated. In the year that followed, subprime lenders began entering bankruptcy, hedge funds began going under and the stock market plunged. There was declining employment, a deteriorating dollar, ever-increasing evidence of a huge housing bust and a growing air of panic in financial markets as the credit crisis deepened. By late summer, the Federal Reserve was rushing to the rescue, making the first of many unorthodox interventions in the economy, including cutting the lending rate by 50 basis points and buying up tens of billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities. When Roubini returned to the I.M.F. last September, he delivered a second talk, predicting a growing crisis of solvency that would infect every sector of the financial system. This time, no one laughed. “He sounded like a madman in 2006,” recalls the I.M.F. economist Prakash Loungani, who invited Roubini on both occasions. “He was a prophet when he returned in 2007.” Over the past year, whenever optimists have declared the worst of the economic crisis behind us, Roubini has countered with steadfast pessimism. In February, when the conventional wisdom held that the venerable investment firms of Wall Street would weather the crisis, Roubini warned that one or more of them would go “belly up” — and six weeks later, Bear Stearns collapsed. Following the Fed’s further extraordinary actions in the spring — including making lines of credit available to selected investment banks and brokerage houses — many economists made note of the ensuing economic rally and proclaimed the credit crisis over and a recession averted. Roubini, who dismissed the rally as nothing more than a “delusional complacency” encouraged by a “bunch of self-serving spinmasters,” stuck to his script of “nightmare” events: waves of corporate bankrupticies, collapses in markets like commercial real estate and municipal bonds and, most alarming, the possible bankruptcy of a large regional or national bank that would trigger a panic by depositors. Not all of these developments have come to pass (and perhaps never will), but the demise last month of the California bank IndyMac — one of the largest such failures in U.S. history — drew only more attention to Roubini’s seeming prescience.

read on…

He claims that he hasn’t been consulted by congress or the treasury and I believe him. Doing so would mean that all the serious people who have been saying that we had averted a crisis were wrong — and also saying that the plan as currently conceived by those people was also wrong.

I don’t know what the plan is going to finally look like, obviously. But as of Friday, Roubini wasn’t sanguine about what he was seeing. He certainly backs intervention, as do nearly all economists, but he characterizes this bailout in terms that are quite startling:

The Treasury plan (even in its current version agreed with Congress) is very poorly conceived and does not contain many of the key elements of a sound and efficient and fair rescue plan. Like in my 10 step HOME plan many other economists and commentators (Charles Calomiris, Raghu Rajan, Kotlikoff and Mehrling, Luigi Zingales, Martin Wolf, Barry Ritholtz, Chris Whalen and twenty others whose views have been featured this week in the RGE Monitor group blogs) have presented ideas that would have minimized the cost to the US taxpayer of a resolution of this financial crisis. It is a disgrace that no professional economist was consulted by Congress or invited to present his/her views at the Congressional hearings on the Treasury rescue plan.

Specifically, the Treasury plan does not formally provide senior preferred shares for the government in exchange for the government purchase of the toxic/illiquid assets of the financial institutions; so this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of the firms; with $700 billion of taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession.

The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.

If that’s true, then this plan will end up being an economic Iraq. And just as people who said “No Blood For Oil” were told to sit down and shut up or risk having the boogeyman use drone planes to create mushroom clouds in shopping malls, those who are saying today, “no bail out for the rich” are similarly being told that the global economy will suffer a nuclear meltdown if the government doesn’t spend this enormous amount of money. And just like then, this all happened in the few short weeks between September and November in a major election year.

We don’t know if there are financial WMDs out there. Certainly, enough people think there are that you can’t dismiss it. But when the experts who have been predicting the WMD say that the plan to rid the world of them is fatally flawed and won’t cure the problem, then they should be listened to. And unfortunately, that won’t happen. We’re listening to the usual suspects who have always been wrong about everything. And the results are likely to as good as they always are.

I’m not expert in these matters, but the more I read, the less I’m sanguine that this huge giveaway is designed to do anything but constrict the next president from being able to successfully intervene in the recession. The money will be gone, the problem will be growing and there will be fewer tools available to adequately stimulate the economy.

I wish that Barack had made the explicit argument in the debate that he would have to spend money on infrastructure and alternative energy to stimulate the economy by creating jobs, while reforming health care to take the cost burden off of businesses and reduce overall expenditures. If there is going to be a severe recession as everyone says, then the argument needs to be made forcefully, right now, that the government will have to spend a lot of money to keep it from spiraling down. If they don’t, then this bailout of Wall Street, which is being mischaracterized as the saving of Main Street as well, is going to be the only shot allowed, because the fiscal scolds are already gathering to hammer home the message that the government is broke and can’t afford to spend the money.

John McCain called for a freeze on government spending in a recession and he’s crazy enough to do it. If he wins it’s a terrible disaster on a number of different levels. But you can bet that even if he loses he will become a leader of the Republican Obstruction caucus and will do everything in his power to prevent the government from doing what it very likely will need to do — spend money.

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Appropriating Wanker of the Day

by dday

I hope Atrios doesn’t mind, but this qualifies for serious wanker status:

After declaring he’d return to Washington to help with the bailout negotiations immediately after last night’s debate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) never went to Capitol Hill today. In fact, McCain stayed largely holed up in his Arlington apartment, leaving only to go to his campaign headquarters just around the block, the New York Times reports:

Asked why Mr. McCain did not go to Capitol Hill after coming back to Washington to help with negotiations, [McCain adviser] Mr. Salter replied that “he can effectively do what he needs to do by phone.”

So this diva gets the cameras assembled on Wednesday and gravely intones that he has to jet to Washington to save the economy. By Thursday he’s blown up the negotiations, by Friday he’s unsuspended the suspension, and she he shoots back to Washington to continue the swashbuckling, which consists of cleaning out the refrigerator and puttering around the house.

And then there’s that coup de grace comment by Mark Salter, that “he can effectively do what he needs to do by phone.” Um, then why couldn’t he have done that on, you know, Wednesday?

I wonder what exciting reality stunts The John McCain Show will have in store for us next week? Maybe he’ll eat a live scorpion to grab himself immunity!

UPDATE: I think we have our answer!

In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.

Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

There is already some urgency to the wedding as Bristol, who is six months pregnant, may not want to walk down the aisle too close to her date of delivery. She turns 18 on October 18 . . .

. . . McCain is expected to have a front-row seat at Bristol’s wedding and to benefit from the outpouring of goodwill that it could bring. “What’s the downside?” a source inside the McCain campaign said. “It would be wonderful. I don’t know that there has ever been a pre-election wedding before.”

As usual in the McCain campaign, a good idea is described as an idea that’s never been tried before.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Release me, Pt. 2

By Dennis Hartley

Although the DVD format has now been thriving for more than a decade, there are still a surprising number of “deep catalogue” titles that remain unreleased. This dearth is not necessarily restricted to foreign, cult and indies, as one might assume. In some cases, I’m sure there are roadblocks due to estate wrangling, music publishing issues, and sundry concerns like profitability (heh), but I suspect the biggest problem is the historical disconnect between the major studio vault keepers and the zeitgeist of true movie buffs.

Thankfully, there are a handful companies who seem to “get it” (Criterion, Anchor Bay, Fantoma, Blue Underground, NoShame, Cult Epics, HVE, Kino, Rhino and New Yorker Video come to mind) but they seem few and far between.

Early in 2007, I posted my top ten “wish list” of films yet to be released on DVD. I’m happy to report that several of those coveted titles have since found their way out of the dusty vaults and into my library (Serial, Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains and O Lucky Man! ). However, as it seems to be the karma of the obsessive collector to never be quite sated, I hereby submit my revised and updated “wish list” for your amusement. As always, dear readers, I welcome your annotations, exhortations and condemnations:

Mickey One-This outstanding 1965 film from the late director Arthur Penn stars Warren Beatty as a stand up comic on the run from the mob. A Kafkaesque, noirish vision (filmed in exquisite B&W) that rates in my book as one of the great American art films. Beatty and Penn pooled their talents again in 1967 to produce Bonnie and Clyde . This gem hasn’t even played on cable in years; it’s a damn shame and a real mystery to me. Oddly, the (very cool and jazzy) soundtrack is available, but alas, the film remains MIA.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle-I’ve discussed this lost 70’s noir gem before; Robert Mitchum is at his sleepy-eyed, world-weary best as an aging hood. Great support is on hand from Peter Boyle as a sleazy hit man, and a superlative Richard Jordan as a manipulative Fed. It did air (once) on Cinemax HD recently, but did not appear to be restored or enhanced for 16×9. Criterion is rumored to have secured the rights (no street date); in the meantime, beware of grey market boots that are floating around on websites.

Farewell, My Lovely-OK, so I admit that I have a Mitchum fixation. But this other late-career noir (from 1975) features one of the actor’s finest performances, IMHO. Mitchum turns the hard-boiled Raymond Chandler dialog into something approaching poetry with a kind of conviction and believability that transcends “acting”; he absolutely inhabits Phillip Marlowe. Luscious Charlotte Rampling (who could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window) is a great femme fatale. I would rank this one right up there with Chinatown and L.A. Confidential ) in the pantheon of retro-noirs set in the City of Angels. Keep your eyes peeled for a pre-Rocky Sly Stallone in a bit part as a surly henchman.

The New Age-This overlooked yet brilliant mid-90’s social satire from writer-director Michael Tolkin (The Rapture) takes a brisk stroll through Yuppie Hell. Judy Davis and Peter Weller have great screen chemistry and give ace performances (they had previously worked together to similar effect in David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch). The film’s real surprise is Adam “Batman” West, who plays an aging lothario with much aplomb.

Stardust-1974 film starring British rocker David Essex is an incisive “rise and fall” portrait of a decadent, self indulgent rock star (isn’t that redundant?) Great acting and fantastic music performances make this one a keeper. The film’s fictional band, “The Stray Cats” features Keith Moon and Dave Edmunds. Some years later, Edmunds produced the debut album for a “real” band who called themselves The Stray Cats (ah, it all has a certain beautiful symmetry to it now, doesn’t it?) The excellent prequel, That’ll Be The Day also stars Essex and features one of Ringo Starr’s best screen performances.

The Decline of Western Civilization-Penelope Spheeris’ vital document of the early 80’s L.A. punk rock scene remains curiously unavailable. The official website nebulously promises that DVD versions of this film and its equally compelling sequel (documenting L.A.’s hair metal heyday) are forthcoming and thanks fans for their, um, continued “patience”. There is a third film in the series (which I have not seen) that played festivals in 1998, but has never to my knowledge been released in home format. Box set, please!

Siesta-Even though it dances precariously close to being dismissible as a laughable, pretentious mess, there is still something quite compelling about Mary Lambert’s 1987 variation on Carnival of Souls. I can’t quite put my finger on what that “something” is (OK, it may have something to do with Ellen Barkin appearing throughout in various stages of undress). Seriously though, from a purely cinematic standpoint, it is a beautiful film. Maddeningly perplexing, perhaps, but beautiful. One might even say it’s hauntingly phantasmagoric. And did I mention that Ellen Barkin appears naked? A great supporting cast (Gabriel Byrne, Isabella Rosselini, Julian Sands, Jodie Foster, Martin Sheen, Grace Jones) tries to make sense of it all. C’mon, Criterion…donde esta el amor?

Hearts of the West-You know you’re in for something refreshingly offbeat when a lead character plops himself down into a barber’s chair and requests to have his hair cut to look “just like Zane Grey’s”. Jeff Bridges excels as a Midwestern rube, a wannabe pulp western writer who falls for a mail scam and ends up broke and jobless in 1930s Tinseltown. Serendipity lands him in the movie business, working as a stuntman. Howard Zieff deftly directs this twin valentine to Hollywood’s golden age of screwball comedies and B-westerns. The fantastic ensemble includes Blythe Danner, Andy Griffith, Donald Pleasence and Alan Arkin in a riotous turn as a perpetually apoplectic film director.

Electric Dreams-It’s the oldest story in the world. Shy nerd (Lenny von Dohlen) buys his first computer, discovers that said computer has sentient abilities and the ability to talk. Meanwhile, a beautiful, shy cello player (Virginia Madsen) moves into his apartment building. The nerd and his computer both develop an instant crush and become rivals for her affection. How many times have we heard that one? I see it as sort of a lightweight, good-natured version of Demon Seed. This one is a guilty pleasure for me (and apparently for many others as well, judging from the clamor from Amazon reviewers for a DVD release). It’s pure fluff, but it’s held up very nicely thanks to the absolutely charming performances from the two leads. Bud Cort provides the voice of the computer.

Tampopo-Much of classic Japanese cinema has been well covered in recent years (especially thanks to Criterion), but it beats the shiitake out of me as to why the 10 wonderful films of the late great Juzo Itami have received relatively spotty attention on Region 1 DVD. Tampopo remains my favorite-a “noodle” western disguised as social satire disguised as a romantic comedy. To Itami-san (wherever you are): Gochi so sa ma!

Well, we can’t have those yet (sigh), but just so this post isn’t all gloom, heartbreak and unrequited desire, here’s some good news-a few forthcoming DVD reissues of note.

Just out this week: The Godfather – The Coppola Restoration Gift Set, the much anticipated spiff-up that improves mightily on the somewhat dodgy previous DVD versions (picture and sound were less than stellar). Also, Sony Studios has kicked off their puzzlingly labeled “Martini Classics” series with five titles, including two of my favorite 70s heist movies – The Anderson Tapes and $ (Dollars).

Wait…there’s more! Yasujiro Ozu’s An Autumn Afternoon gets the Criterion treatment and Kino presents F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh (both on September 30). On October 7, Criterion will reissue Jean-Pierre Melville’s crime classics Le Deuxième Souffle and .Le Doulos Also on October 7, Universal offers a 2-disc set for Touch Of Evil (50th Anniversary Edition). From Paramount: William Friedkin’s groundbreaking film adaptation of Matt Crowley’s The Boys in the Band finally makes it to disc on November 11. David Lynch fans are sure to get a Tweety-sized tingle up their legs when they check out the goodies in David Lynch The Lime Green Set (out on November 18).

One more thing…I’m still on the fence with the whole Blu-Ray thing; the players remain prohibitively expensive, and average list price for the discs approaches absurdity. Also, the catalogue of Blu-Ray titles has been somewhat limited to LCD Hollywood gristmill fare, and mostly of recent vintage. However, after researching upcoming releases, I glean that the studios are getting smarter and roping in the film buffs by starting to reissue more collectibles (just when I thought I was out, they PULL me back in!) Upcoming on Blu-Ray:

Body Heat(October 7), Dr. No (Oct 22), From Russia with Love (Oct 22), Baraka (October 28), Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection (November 5), JFK (November 11), The Man Who Fell to Earth (November 18), The Last Emperor (November 18), The Third Man (November 18), Casablanca (December 2), The Day the Earth Stood Still (December 2), Dr. Strangelove (no date set) and Taxi Driver (no date set).

Update:
Natural born world-shaker

By Dennis Hartley

I’m shocked and saddened by the news today about Paul Newman’s passing. Yes, he was 83 years old, and we all know he had been seriously ill for some time, but it was still one of those “Nooooo!!” moments for me. It was also a spooky moment for me, actually. As I was getting ready to go work out at my health club early this morning, I was flipping through the cable channels, and came across Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (I hadn’t heard the news yet). It’s one of those personal favorites that I always get sucked into, no matter what scene I happen upon. In this case, I tuned in just as Butch, Sundance and Etta were disembarking at the train station in Bolivia. I love that scene (“Aw…he’ll feel a lot better after he’s robbed a couple of banks!”). So there I sat, giggling as if it wasn’t the 250th time I’d watched the film, for 15 minutes before I realized, “Oh yeah, I was just headed out the door.” I’m easily distracted. Anyway, it got my morning off to a great start; as I headed for my truck, I was still chuckling to myself. I switched on the radio, and the very first thing I heard was the NPR host’s solemn announcement. Fuck!

Paul Newman is not only to be admired for leaving behind an impressive array of iconic film roles that truly enriched the art of film acting, but for making so many genuine contributions to humanity in his off-hours. Earlier today on CNN, I caught a phone interview with an obviously choked-up staffer from one of Newman’s Hole in the Wall Camps (for terminally ill children) and it was a much more moving tribute than any collage of film clips could ever be. It’s also worth noting that the donated profits from the “Newman’s Own” food company have translated to over $250,000,000 for charitable organizations. You know-just another one of those typical Democratic Hollywood lefties.

Newman was one of those actors who made it all look so easy; you couldn’t detect the “method”, as it were. He “inhabited” his characters, and you never doubted that you were observing a real flesh-and-blood human being up on that screen. Even when he was playing larger than life characters, he always managed to keep it real and down-to-earth.

It’s difficult to narrow down my favorite Newman movies; no matter how good or bad the film around him was, I never met a Paul Newman performance that I didn’t like. But if I had to cough up a “Top 10” list of what I would personally consider his greatest performances on short notice, it would probably include (in chronological career order):

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963), Harper (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), Slap Shot (1977), The Verdict (1982).

Also, here’s “10 more”; some Newman sleepers I would recommend, films that most obits will likely fail to mention but which are still worth seeking out:

Paris Blues, The Secret War of Harry Frigg, WUSA, Sometimes a Great Notion, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Pocket Money, Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, Fat Man and Little Boy, Nobody’s Fool, Twilight.

I think I’ll leave the final words of farewell to Cool Hand Luke’s best pal, “Dragline”.

“He was smiling… That’s right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He
had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn’t know it ‘fore,
they could tell right then that they weren’t a-gonna beat him. That old Luke
smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he’s a natural-born
world-shaker.”

We’ll keep “shakin’ that world” in your memory, Mr. Newman. I’m pretty sure somebody up there likes you.

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Creationism: The IDiocy That Just Won’t Die

by tristero

Here we go again:

The Brunswick County school board is looking for a way for creationism to be taught in the classroom side by side with evolution.

“It’s really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism,” county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The law says we can’t have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists.”

When asked by a reporter, his fellow board members all said they were in favor of creationism being taught in the classroom.

The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it was unfair for evolution to be taught as fact, saying it should be taught as a theory because there’s no tangible proof it’s true.

“I wasn’t here 2 million years ago,” Fanti said. “If evolution is so slow, why don’t we see anything evolving now?”

The board allowed Fanti to speak longer than he was allowed, and at the end of his speech he volunteered to teach creationism and received applause from the audience. When he walked away, school board Chairwoman Shirley Babson took the podium and said another state had tried to teach evolution and creationism together and failed, and that the school system must teach by the law.

“Evolution is taught because that’s what the General Assembly tells us to teach,” Babson said, adding that she doesn’t agree with it, but that students must learn it to graduate.

Let’s be clear here. It against the law for the state to establish a religion. Creationism is a religious teaching. There is no, none, zero, zip, nada scientific evidence for creationist teaching such as “intelligent design” creationism. It cannot be be taught in the public schools in science class or in any other class as fact.

It’s also incredibly expensive to try to teach creationism. The Dover school board in Pennsylvania ended up spending $1 million of taxpayer’s money when all was said and done, money that could have spent educating children.

h/t darksyde

UPDATE: Hoo boy, There’s something in the water in Brunswick County’s school system. Commenter Wilm provides a passel of links to some creepy behavior:

http://www.starnewsonline.com/ap…ID=200770619006

http://www.wwaytv3.com/brunswick…schools/12/2007

http://www.wwaytv3.com/3_suits_a…e_filed/03/2008

http://www.starnewsonline.com/ar…09180243/0/NEWS

http://www.topix.com/content/kri…-given-time-out

Today’s Torture News

by digby

Do you see something odd about this?

The techniques themselves — forced nudity, sleep deprivation, painful shackling — had been used for years to prepare U.S. fighter pilots for possible capture by an enemy. But Col. Steven Kleinman, an Air Force instructor, said he was shocked in 2003 to see the same harsh methods used haphazardly on Iraqis in a U.S. prison camp. “It had morphed into a form of punishment for those who wouldn’t cooperate,” said Kleinman, a career intelligence officer and survival-school instructor. In dramatic testimony before a Senate panel yesterday, he gave a rare account of how the Pentagon adapted an Air Force training program to squeeze information from captured Iraqis. What Kleinman witnessed in Baghdad in September 2003 prompted him to order a stop to three interrogations, and to warn his superiors that the military’s interrogation practices were abusive and, in his opinion, illegal. “I told the task force commander that the methods were unlawful and were in violation of the Geneva Conventions,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

That’s right. This was done in Iraq. In 2003. While we were still “liberating” the Iraqi people of their lives.

I can’t tell you how infuriating it was last night to hear McCain take credit for ending torture (and Barack for crediting him with it) when he was actually instrumental in legalizing it:

After first insisting that federal law clearly and unambiguously outlaw “torture,” McCain suddenly caved to White House pressure on the MCA, allowing the Administration to insert into the law a clause that effectively allows (and, indeed, legally buttresses the efforts of) the executive branch to implement torture as a means of interrogation.

Without McCain’s pander, there would have been no bad law for the Court to strike down last week. Without McCain’s grandiloquent appeal to Democrats and moderates during that lame-duck session, there quite possibly might have been a better law that just might have passed its constitutional test this term.

McCain’s sell-out on the torture language is not the reason the Justices declared the MCA unconstitutional [in Boumadienne]. It is not the reason why the detainees now have more access to federal courts than they did before. But it is emblematic of the larger and much more destructive, seven-year-long sell-out of the legislative branch in the legal fight against terrorism.

This is the major reason I have such a visceral loathing of this man. Ask yourself what kind of a person would undergo torture, then help legalize it against others while falsely taking credit for standing against it? It’s perverse and immoral in the extreme. It’s evil.

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He Was Serious?

by tristero

When McCain said this nutty thing, I assumed he was just having a pardonable senior moment:

MCCAIN: How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs.

LEHRER: Spending freeze?

MCCAIN: I think we ought to seriously consider with the exceptions the caring of veterans national defense and several other vital issues.

But I learn from Yglesias that McCain was actually serious.

Folks, this isn’t an idea. This is just plain nuttiness on the level of a UFO behind the Hale Bopp comet, scientology, and invading Iraq. You don’t take it seriously. You laugh at it. You sneer at it. And you use it as an example of the sheer flakiness of the person who mentions it.

Note to Democrats, liberals, and other normals: Don’t explain what’s wrong with this “idea.” That serves to provide it status beyond what it is: a slurred mumble by a dipsomaniac who’s about to start hallucinating pink elephants. Just roll your eyes, tap your temple a few times, and stare pityingly at any person who brings it up.

Or you will be held responsible. Remember what happened when people took seriously invading Iraq and argued with those nuts?

Voluntary Corruption

by digby

I know this will come as a huge surprise to you:

A new government audit suggests the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) effectively dropped the ball in overseeing a voluntary program to keep an eye on the troubled Bear Stearns and other massive investment banks. Government auditors found “serious deficiencies” in SEC oversight of Bear Stearns prior to its collapse in March. The Inspector General of the SEC also found that in some cases, Bear Stearns did not comply “with the spirit” of the voluntary program designed to oversee it.

Leading up to its collapse, Bear Stearns was participating along with other major investment banks in a “voluntary” oversight program begun in 2004 designed to consolidate supervision. The idea was that voluntary regulation of these banks was the only way to effectively govern their behavior because of the peculiar complexity and their international structures.

In Bear Stearns’ case, however, auditors found the company failed to comply with a number of the voluntary rules before its collapse, and that the SEC did little or nothing to pressure Bear Stearns into compliance.

I can’t imagine how something like that could happen, can you? Who could have expected that voluntary regulations wouldn’t work? Shocking.

The good news is that the people who have been in charge are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore:

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox responded to the report announcing the immediate end of the voluntary program. In a written statement, he said “The last six months have made it abundantly clear that voluntary regulation does not work.” The voluntary “program was fundamentally flawed from the beginning, because investment banks could opt in or out of supervision voluntarily,” Cox said.

That’s quite an insight.

The one thing McCain has gotten right is that he’s called for the firing of that guy. Not that it would solve anything, but it needs to be done anyway. This corrupt toady had no business being anywhere near the SEC.

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